Greeting

We are pleased to announce that the 113th Annual Meeting of the Japanese Society of Gastroenterology will be held over three days, from Thursday, May 6th to Saturday, May 8th, 2027, at the Keio Plaza Hotel Sapporo and Grand Mercure Sapporo Odori Park. This meeting will be hybrid, with in-person attendance as the primary focus.

Since its founding in 1898, this society has been supported by the tireless efforts of our predecessors and has developed into a leading academic conference in gastroenterology in Japan. It is a great honor for me to have been appointed President of such a traditional and prestigious meeting.

The theme of this meeting is “The Evolution of Gastroenterology: Learning from Cases, Exploring through Science, and Connecting with Evidence.” As President, what I value most is the attitude of engaging sincerely with each case and learning from it. Taking the ‘why’ questions that arise in clinical practice as our starting point, we will use science to explore pathophysiology in depth and reliably convey this as verified evidence to society and to the next patient. We intend to make this Annual Meeting in Sapporo an opportunity to return to the fundamentals of medicine and a forum that will lead to new discoveries and progress.

For special lectures, we have invited Professor Shimon Sakaguchi, 2025 Nobel Prize Laureate in Physiology or Medicine; Professor Yasuhiko Tabata, a leading expert in regenerative medicine and biomaterials research; Professor Satoshi Uematsu, a leading expert in gut microbiota research; and Professor Yuko Nakajima, a President of Médecins Sans Frontières Japan. These sessions will provide an opportunity to broaden our perspective from basic research to clinical practice and societal implementation.

In addition, as part of the President’s Special Programs, we have launched three initiatives: a gastroenterology education session, a telemedicine session, and a poster presentation session for medical students.

We aim to organize this Annual Meeting to achieve both the value of in-person gathering and discussion and the potential for sharing knowledge across distances, thereby passing the baton successfully to the next generation.

Spring in Sapporo is the ideal season for learning and networking. We hope that many of you will gather in Sapporo. Learning from Cases, Exploring through Science, and Connecting with Evidence — we hope that you will gain valuable insights from these practical experiences that will benefit your clinical practice and research from tomorrow onward.

We sincerely look forward to your participation.